Poll: ‘Pokemon Go’ or Pokemon No?

It’s amazing how the silliest things manage to catch on and take the world by storm. Nintendo’s mobile gaming sensation ‘Pokémon Go’ inspires such a level of obsession that it’s already been linked to several car crashes, accidents and even a couple of deaths. (Yikes!) Are you in the Poké club?

I’m a bit old for ‘Pokémon’. The original Game Boy titles came out just as I was leaving college. I was aware of the trading cards and cartoons and other media expansions from children in my life, but never gave them much thought. Although I understand that the franchise has adult fans, that ship sailed right past me.

As far as ‘Pokémon Go’, augmented reality games have never particularly interested me. I value my smartphone’s battery life and data consumption too much to waste on that. If this were a property that meant more to me, I might check it out. This fad, however, I’m comfortable letting pass me by.

Do You Play 'Pokémon Go'?

I'm obsessed! I play this game everywhere I go!

I play it every now and then to waste some time, but it doesn't consume my life.

About Josh Zyber

Josh Zyber is a veteran movie and video disc reviewer from Laserdisc to DVD and beyond. He's previously written for DVDFile.com, DVDTalk.com and Home Theater magazine. These days, he wastes most of his free time managing this blog and writing the occasional Blu-ray review for High-Def Digest.

23 comments

TJ Kats

Voted the too old option although I don’t think I’m to old. Like you I felt too old when it came out so have no attachment to the franchise. If it were something that I had a separate interest in I may give a game like this a chance.

HuskerGuy

Not voting because I don’t like the options, but I’ve never played it and have no interest. It’s not because I’m too old though, I don’t think anyone is too old to play it. It seems like a neat way to get people out of the house.

Shayne Blakeley

Well, yeah, they do. Nintendo is one of the owners of the Pokemon franchise. This game is a joint project between The Pokemon Company and Niantic, the publisher. Nintendo’s former CEO, Satoru Iwata, helped conceive and develop the game from his death bed before he passed away last year.

Shayne Blakeley

What I had read was that they received a percentage based on the licensing of the Pokemon brand but that they weren’t actually involved in the making of the game, and that the stock fall occurred when people realized that. Your link suggests otherwise and now I don’t know what to believe, my whole life is a lie!

Nintendo owns a 1/3 stake in The Pokemon Company and receives about 30% of the profits from Pokemon Go. When the game was released, people assumed that most if not all of the profits went straight to Nintendo. When they realized that wasn’t the case, people started dumping their shares. The stock was overvalued for a brief period, is what it comes to. Now the market is correcting.

I think most people also assumed that Nintendo was fully responsible for the development of the game, and its success was a sign that Nintendo was back in top form and ready to dominate the mobile market. The realization that the project was licensed to Niantic put a damper on those hopes for a big Nintendo comeback.

Nonetheless, Nintendo was a co-creator of the game and receives a big chunk of the profits from it.

William Henley

Nintendo also said they were right on track with profit estimates from the game.

What is interesting is that this means that quite a few lawsuits are probably going to get thrown out. I did see one today where they named Niantic, The Pokemon Company, and Nintendo all as defendants, but I bet many are just suing Nintendo.

Patient O.T.

Actual outdoor games are more fun, and involve actual human interaction. People are so jazzed that “this game has people outside moving” – yeah, but it’s just a way of having your completely self contained video game strapped to your body. It’s still playing a video game.
For us normal folks, it’s like being around Body snatchers. I feel like Ripley, wanting to slowly back out of the creepy egg chamber.
It is very weird that people want to be in a fake environment while in a real environment.
It’s not real world interaction… until the Bus hits you, of course.

William Henley

I was hooked for the first couple of weeks. I went out and went on Pokemon hunts, got tons of exercise, met many people. It was fantastic.

Then Niantic pretty much broke the game with the breaking, and the eventual removal, of the Pokemon Tracker from the game, and then started bullying people who made their own trackers and maps. So now, you are pretty much blindly trying to find Pokemon. It completely broke the thing that was the major draw of the game.

On their Facebook game, they said that they are testing a replacement system, and are going to start rolling it out in phases to users. I load it up after every update to see if it is fixed.

As for battery drainage, i turn off the camera while playing, and force quit the game when I am indoors or driving. As for data, I have unlimited 4G LTE, so I am good there.

photogdave

I don’t even have a cell phone. I have a rotary phone from the 1940s.
I have a PS4 but haven’t played a game on it in about three years!
I have an iPod touch and use it for playing music in my car and emailing when I’m sitting on the couch watching blu rays.
I know of Pokemon from South Park.

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